Termination, Part 1
by Destroyor
Summary: Slade Wilson has been sent by the US government to an isolated island in the Bermuda Triangle to rescue his long time partner, Bill Wintergrey, but something is amiss on Gorilla Island. What will Slade find there, and how will it change him? - My personal attempt at an origin story for Deathstroke. Many familiar characters, feedback appreciated, possibly continuing into a parts 2&3
1. Chapter 1

Slade Chapter One

700 meters. There was the hairy bastard. Lumbering, hunched over just like the ones you'd see in a Zoo back stateside, only this wasn't no zoo. I was on my stomach on a hill, flanked and concealed by dense foliage, overlooking what seemed to be a supply camp, straddling a river that flowed further through the forest to God knows where. "Huh, like something out of a sci-fi movie" I muttered from under my mask. By mask I mean the covert masks me and Wintergrey used on ops like these, lined with a thin layer of lead to make us completely un identifiable, 'less we take the masks off. Wintergrey. Bill was the finest soldier I'd ever seen, and here I was saving his ass. The thought that these apes may have pinched him was enough to make me almost squeeze the trigger on my heavily modified M107 sniper rifle. No. Not yet.

The dossier called this place Mubak-ak-Too.. Whatever that meant. Never heard of the place, in 16 years of service, and here I was, staring down the barrel at a camp manned by gorillas. Yeah, you heard that right. 'Super-intelligent primates' said the dossier. I scoffed at it, but if anybody could have taken down Bill Wintergrey, it had to be something out of this world. Drawing a deep breath and drawing myself back to the task at hand, I counted the apes guarding the perimeter. 1,2,3,4 and they were pretty spaced out. I tightened the silencer on the barrel of my sniper rifle and let one go. The hairy beast hit the ground like a sack of rice. I clipped the other one in a similar fashion, but the other two were together. Time to get close.

I figured I could leave the M107 on the hill and doing that, crept down the hill and within minutes was at the perimeters. It had been a day since I dropped onto this Island and nothing so far. Just typical jungles beasts and the occasional patrol here and there, but something wasn't sittin' right. Something told me something bigger was going on here, and it put just the spur in my step that I needed. My mask and armor I spray painted green, and the furry guys didn't see me coming. I slit one of their throats, drawing the attention of one of 'em, but a steel-toed boot to the face kept him honest.

The camp seemed very undermanned, almost too undermanned. Some crates loaded onto the back of some trucks caught me on to what was really going on here. That logo was unmistakable, but I still felt the need to confirm it with base. No can do, this was as black an op as it gets. But I didn't need to confirm a thing. Grodd. I thought the guy was a myth, hell, we all did. But now it was making sense.

See Grodd was something of an enigma to the folks back in the US. All they knew was that he was dangerous, very smart, and he was a gorilla. Enough to make anybody back at base laugh at the story. But no, at that moment I knew that Grodd was very real, and I was up shit's creek with barely even a boat, let alone a paddle. But Bill needed me, no man left behind, right? Some rustling in the bushes let me know I wouldn't be alone for much longer, and in a few strides I was gone, back through the forest. I managed to lift a map off of one of my poor simean friends; I was on the northern tip of the island, explains the lack of manpower.

But the island was much bigger than I thought, and right smack in the middle? Gorilla City. My stomach turned. I had no backup, no communication with base, and limited resources, but don't get me wrong. It wasn't fear for my own life that I felt that 2nd day on the island. It was fear for Bill's.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The forest smelled pungently of gorilla feces and damp, tropical moisture. I had been tracking a gorilla patrol for a few days now. Damn this forest was hard to maneuver, and the map I had lifted off of that dead guard was written in a different language. But these apes, these were different; they carried strange weapons, looked to be made of energy, I could tell that from the bright light that even I could see from my cozy tree alcove hiding place some yards away. The energy seemed to be held together by some kind of gold casing, in the shape of a rifle. I hadn't seen any of the apes fire a shot, but I assumed it acts just like your standard M4, just with a little more _boom_. The head of the patrol, a huge lug of an ape, easily 7 feet tall, wore a really fancy looking golden helmet like something out of an old school space flick, and a flowing red cape that ended just at the bottom of his back. The rest I could tell were regular grunts; a head shorter than the big guy, carrying some energy rifles and wearing nothing else but a loincloth, I'm assuming for decency.

I edged forward slightly, keeping a stiff hand on my sidearm. A U.S. special forces Beretta M9, heavily customized, fit with a silencer, red dot sight, extended mag, you name it. The fact that these monkeys might be carrying hardware using energy clips and advanced technology that made my weapons look like _nerf guns_ made me cringe. Nevertheless, I edged slightly closer to the patrol, this one was a big one. Six apes, with a decent amount of space between each other, but I could tell from their body language, and the way they would periodically look around that these weren't the dumb, lumbering apes I had taken down at that supply camp. These goons were _trained_, they were ready for guys like me, trained to be. It wouldn't be easy to ruin these guys' day. As I soon found out, I wouldn't have to.

The big ape with the golden helmet motioned to the other guys in the patrol group, and blustered out what seemed like an order; to me it seemed like a bunch of gorilla grunting and yelling. A couple of the apes produced machetes and started hacking away at some heavy brush, and before long there was a stone door where a bunch of leaves and weeds had been. This _wasn't_ a patrol. Turned out there was another gorilla, trailing behind the patrol, and he had somebody in tow. This seventh ape emerged from the foliage, dragging behind him a human man. The man was very frail, clearly starved, and from his clothing it was obvious he had been on this island much, much longer than I had been. The big oaf that had brought the prisoner to this party passed him to the ape in charge. Huh, tossed him like a set of car keys to the other one. _What exactly was I dealing with here?_ The ape looked like he was pressing some buttons on the stone door. I tracked his hand movements easily; I wanted to see what they were hiding in there. The cave was very dark inside, but they weren't here to sightsee. The patrol commander lifted the human with one fist, and, barking some kind of one-word insult at the man, threw him into the cave like last week's laundry. Pretty soon they were on their way, but I wasn't.

I crept up to the door, with my head on a swivel looking out for any other primates that may have stayed behind. Coast was clear. The technology of the stone door was like nothing I had ever seen; it was almost like a touch-screen keypad, but it was on a stone face, and if I hadn't been stalking my quarries from the bushes, it would've looked just like a big rock to me. But, mimicking the button presses of the gorilla patrolman, the door creaked and slowly rolled open. Reaching down to my utility belt, I produced a flashlight to help me see through the darkness.

What I saw… Well, let's just say that the disheveled gentleman the apes had just _disposed of_ was not alone. The cave walls were littered with corpses, all straggly, all emaciated. It was disgusting. It looked like something out of those old pictures of Nazi concentration camps, littered with starved men, only these images were right before my eyes. The cave, or should I say, graveyard, had a small passage in the back that seemed to lead to more caves.

"Graagh!" The roar echoed through the caves before I could react. The exit had closed, and I had nowhere to run. I heard footsteps, coming right in my direction. I wasn't alone, and this was a big S.O.B. Just as I reached for my M9 to have a fighting chance, I was knocked off my feet by what felt like a semi-truck. I shook off the blow and looked up; a huge silver-back gorilla, with menace in his eyes stood over me. _Shit._ He turned around for another charge, and as I ducked out of the way, I wondered _how the hell_ I was gonna take this guy down.


	3. Chapter 3

7 Years ago-

"Wash your face kid." Wintergrey's voice had always comforted me. He had been in the service a few years longer than me, and had been something of a mentor leading into my induction into the SOF. "Now, let's go another round. You we're let in because of your potential, if you ain't workin' at it the general's just gonna kick you out," he said, a slight encouraging grin creeping across his face as he raised his bo-staff over his head. "Alright, Bill, take it easy though, will ya? This bojutsu or whatever it's called is no shit." Me and Bill had gone through this so many times. These Bo-staffs were made out of metal, 2 feet of solid metal, and Bill wanted me to know the ins and outs of it within a matter of months. He strikes high, I block high. He strikes low, I block low. Wintergrey was a great teacher, and we had developed something of a chemistry. The higher ups noticed it right away, and Wintergrey hand-picked me to be his "wing man". The SOF was a special branch of the military; we got the best training, the best guns, you name it. And what really made us different, what really made us deadly, was that we only worked in teams of two. Studies had shown that 2 highly compatible agents with specialized training, in constant communication could outsmart and outfight any other regular-capacity squad. Some army generals decided to put this theory into practice, and me and Wintergrey were selected almost immediately.

Our training facility was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the USS Ravager. One hell of a ship it was. The training facility was comprised Of a large number of sound proof rooms, complete with target practice dummies, hand-to-hand training dummies, and any kind of weapon specialized any agent wished to train in. Me, I had always been worth my salt in any fight, being the fastest, strongest guy in the room'll do that to ya, but Wintergrey thought it would be best for me to try something different. "Ya know, some of the best fighters in the world are more than just bare-knuckle brawlers, Wilson." That was the company line for what I had taken to calling 'Wintergrey Kung-Fu Palace'. And that's how we ended up here, at the end of yet another hours-long training session, dripping sweat, Bo-staffs clanging, creating an echo that would go throughout the room. It was a great sound; the sound of combat, the sound of progression. It was a sound that I was beginning to love.

A few weeks had gone by, and I remember Bill shaking me from my bunk that morning. "It's time Slade. It's day one." We had been preparing for this for months now. Our first op. It was a thought that salivated me, and Bill felt the same. We were both eager to prove ourself where we knew we could shine; like a little kid that just learned a new trick on his bike, eager to show it off and earn the awe and envy of all the other neighborhood kids. It was our time. "Oh, how'd I forget?" He said, producing a fancy looking small black leather case from his pocket. "Try this on" he said, tossing it into my lap. I asked what it was and got no response, he just took off.

The leather case had two gold clasps that I pushed open, and the odor from inside was odd. Whatever was in there had been in there for a long time, waiting. It had an almost new shoe smell, and slowly I pushed back the leather's cover and there it was, staring at me. A mask. But not just any mask, my mask. The left side was a rusty gold-ish color, the right side a very dark navy blue. There were two eye holes cut in, and picking it up, I felt its weight in my hand. This mask must have cost Bill a fortune, was my initial thought. Kevlar, through and through, yet light as a feather. Lead-lining, made the piece of work completely resistant to any kind of x-ray or identification technology. I brought it up to my face and it stared back at me, it was an inanimate object but had a kind of eery, knowing feel to it. I got up, and placed it on my head for the first time, and the thing fit like a glove. Looking into the mirror, I remembered Wintergrey's words, almost as if there was an intercom built into the mask as well. "This is our big break Slade. No more staying on dirty bases, or having to fight through shitty run down villages. We make our own path now. We're gonna be the big guys, man. Legends." Wintergrey was right. It was time. I stepped out onto the deck, and was greeted by Wintergrey. We looked like twins, except Wintergrey's mask had the colors inverted so that our commanding officers had some way to tell us apart. He handed me a dossier on our target, and it began.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The ape lumbered over the trembling body of the man he had just nearly trampled. He lifted his fists and letting out a raucous grunt brought them down with a great force. But it was all a ruse. Slade Wilson, his body lying lifeless on the ground mere seconds before, had risen to his feet, and rising to his feet, stood mere feet in front of the great ape, but the suffocating darkness of the cave made sound the only indicator that the two were both present in the cave. The shuffling of Wilson's feet as he rose tipped off the cave ape to his position, and the beast turned and charged yet again. Falling to his back, Wilson only barely escaped the beast's charge by slipping underneath him. A couple futile punches to the ape's back brought Wilson an epiphany; nothing short of solid rock would pierce this hide. Fortunately for the soldier, he and his enemy we're surrounded on four sides by solid, cold, rock. He backed away a few paces, as quietly as he could. 'Maybe this'll be easier than I thought' he thought to himself as he made one last, purposely loud step.

The ape smelled blood. His vision was impaired in the darkness as well, and the ape hoped to use his gargantuan size and strength to win the battle. So, charging blindly in the direction of the noise, his underestimation of Slade Wilson rewarded him with stiff, hard rock to his cranium. The gorilla fell to the floor, unconscious, but alive. Slade walked over very slowly, small bits and pieces on the leg plates of his green-painted armor chipped off and littering the cave floor. He pondered taking the ape's life, but thought against the notion. It was obvious. This ape was not part of the patrol earlier, and neither was he a guard of this forsaken grave pit, a graveyard has no need for guards. The poor creature was as much a prisoner of the stone cave as were the souls of the men that littered the cave with their corpses. "Poor bastard," muttered Slade Wilson from behind his mask. His flashlight had been shattered in the previous melee. Just my luck, he thought.

The following hours were spent by Slade searching for stones to use to make a fire with. After a couple hours, he managed to locate some bits and pieces and produced a fire. As the embers lot up the cave he was in, which he now knew to be small alcove, leading to a deeper set of caves, he also finally realized just how gargantuan the ape he had battled with in the cave really was. As the ape lay, still unconscious a few feet away from where Slade was perched, he sized the beast up as being definitely within the range of 8 to 9 feet in height. Slade pondered his next move, and in that moment realized the hopelessness of his situation. The paper maps he had in his possession had proved useless due to his lack of understanding of the simian language, and the cave door behind him had shut, Wilson having no knowledge of how to re-open it.

He quickly realized that the key to his survival was his unconscious guest in that stone cave. Slade removed his mask, revealing a chiseled face. Slade was in his mid thirties, a handsome man by most definition, with sharp, angular features. He had well-groomed dark hair, dark eyes, accompanied by a dark goatee. Discarding his mask, as he no longer saw the point of it on a deserted island, he spat on the cave floor and, rising to his feet, moved over to his quarry.

His army training had taught him many different methods of torture, but something about the ape gave him the notion that he would need none. It was something that Slade had seen in the creature's eyes for a brief time during their confrontation. It wasn't anger in the beast's eyes, it was regret, something Slade was very familiar with. Slade struggled, almost comically, to wake the great ape. After a short time, his patience was wearing thin. Bill Wintergrey was not going to save himself, and this in mind, Slade raised his fist and then brought it crashing back down, directly down on the forehead of the great ape. The beast of the caves came roaring to life, with a ferocity that would have sent Slade running through the caves, were he a man of lesser resolve. "Where am I?" Slade asked, in a tone less interrogative, more threatening. "There is no need to shout, human." Slade's disbelief was clear when the giant primate responded in English. The ape continued to draw the amazement of Slade Wilson by further explaining that his name was Solovar, and he was a diplomat. Slade would have thought Solovar was taking him for a fool, but he spoke very articulately, even with a voice so monotonous that it seemed to echo through the caves for miles. As they spoke, Slade slowly began to believe Solovar's words, as little by little they began to ring true and run parallel with what Wilson had seen over the past week on the Island.

Solovar told him of he and Grodd's discovery of a meteorite in their South African home, the Sullivan Zoo. At this time both Solovar and Grodd were simple primates, amusement for visitors to the Zoo. The meteorite emitted an otherworldly green glow, that fascinated both apes as they gazed upon it. Immediately, the apes felt a greater sense of awareness of where they were and who they were. Within days, they were solving complex math equations, and within weeks, they rivaled the greatest human scientists in intellect. He also told Wilson the story of he and Grodd's exodus to Gorilla Island, the uncharted island they were presently on, where Bill Wintergrey had vanished months earlier.


End file.
